John Quincy Adams’s (JQA) diary, which was inspired by his father John Adams (JA) and started as a travel journal, initiated a lifelong writing obsession. In 1779, twelve-year-old JQA made his second trip abroad to accompany his father’s diplomatic mission. While in Europe, he attended various schools and traveled to St. Petersburg as an interpreter during Francis Dana’s mission to Russia. He subsequently served as JA’s secretary at Paris during the final months before the Anglo-American Definitive Peace Treaty was signed in September 1783. Two years later, JQA returned to the US. After graduating from Harvard College in 1787, he moved to Newburyport to read law under Theophilus Parsons and in 1790 he established a legal practice in Boston. JQA’s skill as a writer brought him public acclaim, and in 1794 President George Washington nominated him as US minister resident to the Netherlands.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) entered diplomatic service in September 1794 as US minister resident to the Netherlands. He married Louisa Catherine Johnson (LCA) in July 1797 after a fourteen-month engagement, and their three sons were born in this period. During his father John Adams’s (JA) presidency they moved to Berlin where, as US minister plenipotentiary, JQA signed a new Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce. JQA returned to the US in 1801 and entered politics, elected first to the Massachusetts senate in 1802 and then to the US Senate in 1803. His contentious relationship with fellow Federalist members over his support of some Democratic-Republican policies led to his removal from office. In May 1808 the Federalist-controlled Massachusetts legislature voted to replace him at the end of his term, prompting JQA’s resignation in June. Between 1806 and 1809 he also served as the first Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory at Harvard.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) returned to diplomatic service in August 1809 as the US’s first minister plenipotentiary to Russia. In St. Petersburg JQA was well-liked by Emperor Alexander I and closely followed the battles of the Napoleonic Wars then raging across Europe. When the US declared war on Great Britain in 1812, Adams watched from afar as the conflict dragged on for two years. In April 1814, he traveled to Ghent, Belgium, as part of the US delegation to negotiate an end to the war with England; the Treaty of Ghent was signed on Christmas Eve. Subsequently appointed US minister to the Court of St. James’s in May 1815, JQA served in London for the next two years.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) served as the US secretary of state during James Monroe’s presidency. Adams’s duties included organizing and responding to all State Department correspondence and negotiating agreements beneficial to the US. His achievements as secretary of state include the Anglo-American Convention of 1818, which established the US border with Canada along the 49th parallel, and the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 (Transcontinental Treaty), which resulted in the US acquisition of Florida. JQA also formulated the policy that became known as the Monroe Doctrine, in which the US called for European non-intervention in the western hemisphere, specifically in the affairs of newly independent Latin American nations. As Monroe’s presidency came to an end, JQA was among the top candidates in the 1824 presidential election. When no candidate earned the necessary majority, the House of Representatives decided the election in JQA’s favor in February 1825.
John Quincy Adams (JQA) was inaugurated as the sixth president of the US on 4 March 1825 and began his administration with an ambitious agenda of improvements for American society. His presidency was embattled. Supporters of Andrew Jackson, who believed their candidate had unfairly lost the 1824 election, worked ceaselessly to foil JQA’s plans. Domestically, JQA refused to replace civil servants with partisan supporters, and his administration became involved in disputes between the Creek Nation and the state of Georgia. JQA’s foreign policy also suffered, as partisan bickering in Congress failed to provide timely funding for US delegates to attend the 1826 Congress of Panama. Political mudslinging in advance of the 1828 presidential election was particularly fierce, and by mid-1827 JQA knew he would not be reelected.
In 1831 John Quincy Adams (JQA) became the only former president to subsequently serve in the US House of Representatives. As the chairman of the House Committee on Manufactures, he helped compose the compromise tariff bill of 1832. He traveled to Philadelphia as part of a committee that investigated the Bank of the United States, drafting a minority report in support of rechartering the bank after disagreeing with the committee’s majority report. JQA regularly presented the antislavery petitions he received from across the country, and he vehemently opposed the passage of the Gag Rule in 1836 that prevented House discussion of petitions related to slavery. He opposed the annexation of Texas, and in 1838 he delivered a marathon speech condemning the evils of slavery. JQA also chaired the committee that oversaw the bequest of James Smithson, which was used to establish the Smithsonian Institution.
During his final years of service in the US House of Representatives, John Quincy Adams (JQA) continued to oppose the Gag Rule that prevented House discussion of petitions related to slavery. In 1839 he joined the defense team for the Africans who revolted aboard the Spanish slave ship Amistad. The Supreme Court declared the Amistad Africans free on 9 March 1841 after JQA delivered oral arguments in their favor. In 1842 JQA faced a censure hearing and ably defended himself against charges from southern congressmen. He introduced a successful resolution that finally led to the repeal of the Gag Rule in 1844. JQA voted against both the annexation of Texas in 1845 and the US declaration of war with Mexico in 1846. He collapsed on the floor of the House on 21 February 1848 and died two days later.
- Elizabeth C. Adams
- Greenleaf E. Price
Charles went to Boston and
returned to dine. Miss Susan
Quincy was here yesterday, and took the Manuscript Volume
which had belonged to Josiah Flint
of Dorchester and his son Henry
Flint, for half a century a Tutor at Harvard College, and
which she had sent me— I answered an invitation of a Committee of the
Citizens of Springfield, to a public dinner to be given there on the
3d. of this month upon the occasion of
the opening of the railroad from Boston to that place, through
Worcester; and the project of which imports a continuance of it to the
Hudson river— I declined this invitation. But that which now absorbs
great part of my time, and all my good feelings is the case of 53
African Negroes taken, at sea, off Montauk point, by Lieutt.
Gedney in a Vessel of the United States employed upon the
survey of the Coast; and brought into the Port of New-London— These
Negroes were a fresh importation of Slaves from Africa into the Havana,
against the Laws of Spain; and her Treaties with Great-Britain—purchased
there under the nose of the joint Commission of Britain and Spain
sitting there for the suppression of the Slave-trade— Shipped from the
Havana, for another port on the Island, by two Spanish Subjects,
Ruiz and Montes, the purchasers of the Slaves—
When four days out, the Negroes revolted; killed the Captain and Cook of the ship; took possession of the ship; spared the
lives of Ruiz and Montes, and ordered the latter, skilful in Navigation
of, which they were ignorant, to steer for Sierra Leone. He deceived
them by changing the course of the ship every night from that which they
understood enough of navigation to make it necessary for him to steer by
day— By this double process, they had as it were finally drifted upon
our coast and being finally boarded by Lieutt. Gedney, he at the request of the two white men took
possession of the vessel, without resistance from the negroes, and
brought her into New London. 49 of the Negroes were claimed by Ruiz as
his property. 4 Children—3 girls and a boy, by Montes as his property—
But they charged the Negro men, with murder and Piracy, for killing the
Captain and cook and taking the ship; and yet claimed all the Negroes as
their property; and Lieutenant Gedney libelled the ship and Cargo,
including the Negroes for Salvage— The Spanish Minister too, at Washington, has laid claim to
the whole ship, Cargo and Negroes, to be restored to the owners, by
virtue of the 9th. Article of the Treaty
with Spain of 27. October 1795—the District judge Judson received the charge of Piracy, and committed
the 49 negro men to be tried at the Circuit Court at Hartford on the
17th. of September, and the four
children to appear as witnesses—and at the same time he admitted the
claim of the Spaniards to the Negroes as their property, and the Libel
of Captain Gedney When the Circuit Court met, on the 17th.
Judge Thomson, upon a statement
of the facts by the grand-jury charged them that the Court had no
jurisdiction of any crime committed on the high seas, in a Spanish
vessel—but he refused to liberate the Negroes upon Habeas Corpus;
because they were claimed by the Spaniards as property, and he held that
the District Court had jurisdiction upon this claim— More upon this
subject to-morrow— I went up to Charles’s house at Sunset, and found
Mr and Mrs Sidney
Brooks there to take tea— Charles and his wife and E. Price Greenleaf spent the
Evening here.